Skip Lists in Python, Zero to Hero: Deep Dive and System Design Connections
Introduction Skip lists are a beautiful idea: a simple, probabilistic alternative to balanced trees that delivers expected O(log n) search, insert, and delete, yet is easier to implement and friendlier to concurrency. They’ve quietly powered critical systems for decades—from leaderboards and rate limiters to LSM-tree memtables and Redis sorted sets. In this post, you’ll go from beginner to hero: Understand the intuition, guarantees, and design of skip lists Implement a production-quality skip list in Python Learn how skip lists show up in system design Get practical guidance on performance, determinism, and trade-offs Explore advanced variants and when to use them If you’re building systems that need fast ordered access, range queries, or rank-based operations, skip lists belong in your toolkit. ...